Personally, I think of permaculture as a subset of systems thinking (as presented and explained in Thinking in Systems: A Primer) with some additional caveats/constraints:
- The system has to involve human beings
- The designer has to be creating an ethical, fair, and sustainable system.
That’s a very broad and not very tangible definition, and something that was mentioned in the Permaculture Design Certificate I recently completed was:
Permaculture is conscious lifestyle
I quite like this definition as it gives people a lens to conceptualise the topic. It is thinking about everything in relationship with everything else (looking at the whole system and all its parts) and trying to design something that allows us to live well, while not negatively impacting the planet or others (or even better, by positively impacting it).
It was also mentioned that permaculture is evolving (as with every movement in the world involving people, or just living things if we think of evolution). There is much more of an emphasis now on community sufficiency > self sufficiency, valuing diversity and the marginal, and indigenous recognition and engagement/action in line with this.
The definition we discussed in class is:
- systems thinking, modelled on natural systems
- how humans can live well, in both meanings of the word, within planetary boundaries